Wow. Just got around to checking prices for Exemplaire... Barneys is stocking them this season, and they're selling single ply cashmere sweaters online for 1.2k-ish. Has anyone had the chance to check these things out in person?

Very nice, onassis seems like a nice store also, they're working on a website with store (was I the only one who didn't knew you could change the sizes of smilies? )
also, after christmas I will probably be able to proxy Cos to wherever you want

I think there's a ton of potential in the mass retail market in America. If you put up Uniqlo locations up and down the coasts and in the larger Midwest cities, how badly would that hurt BR and Gap? Better looking clothes, that feel better, and cost less.

They are much smarter. By having kept their locations very limited, and only in a very sought after, cool, space, they've managed to cultivate an air of exclusivity around what is really a mass market product. Think of Target vs. Walmart. That's really their differentiator.

Sure, the clothes fit a little differently, but honestly, it's not unlike the GAP circa 1995, when GAP was in its heydey, before it lost its focus, and started to do really un-GAP like things like leather jean jackets (honestly, there was one in about 2000 that sold for about $300, and was not that much worse than the similar offerings of say, RRL, though obviously, the notions were not as good) and leather pants (who every greenlighted this was probably dragged through HQ behind a chariot - people simply do not go to the GAP to buy leather pants, and even in the LA stores, you had your pick of sizes even at 70% off).

Right now, you have tourists going to NYC and bring stuff back to De Moines, or Boise, or Lincoln, NE, and they are all apeshit about Uniqlo. I remember that when GAP expanded in the late 80s and early 90s, it was the same thing - but then you have to do things to maintain that image. And in 2012, for a place like Uniqlo, there is a much more crowded market, and a lot more marketing considerations. This just the opinion of someone who works in that space.

i just wanted to point out that translating any concept from one culture to another is far from trivial.
I don't think that Fuuma would say that all quantitative modeling is stupid, but it's certainly worth nothing that such models generally require an expert user to properly apply them and properly intepret the results and uncertainties. It's also worth nothing that the more trivial the problem, the better models generally perform, which means that for very difficult, complex problems, a model is often as good as a shot in the dark. Why do you think companies adjust their growth and revenues projections constantly? Why do you think that companies fail in spectacular fashion, on a regular basis? The old saying "There are liars, damn liars, and then there are statisticians (or more accurately, data scientists)", is not a bad one to remember.
Also, greed can get in the way of reason. For example, it should have been foreseen that distributed risk does not mean that all risk therefore becomes infinitesimally small, but when people are making money hand over fist, all the blood streaming to the phallus makes for people to think.

I don't disagree. That said, if you don't think that Uniqlo isn't shelling out some sweet sweet moolah to some very smart people to try and figure this out for them, well you're a smart guy so you don't think that. Also, I think it's important to distinguish the difference between Uniqlo trying to figure out whether or not they are going to sell 1,000 or 10,000 polo shirts in the American marketplace vs. the financial sector trying to assess the value of $1T in mortgages. Uniqlo can definitely afford to make concerted yet conservative effort to enter the American online-retail market, have it fail, and still survive. In the other case, not so much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dieworkwear

Taking another shot at introducing this idea:
I think there should be something like this for SWD. I would start the thread, but whoever is the OP, I think, should have some kind of intuition for the subject, and be able to organize it in the way David has. I'm not that person.
It would be a useful thread, however, and people like me could learn a lot from it.
Note, I realize that given the diversity of SWD, this kind of thread could become impossibly hard to manage. But I feel like taking a shot at it would be worthwhile.

I agree with the notion that it would be very helpful. That said, I'm not sure if the idea is very practical. The benefit to MC books is that at the end of the day everybody is wearing the same thing (shirt, tie, jacket, pants, and shoes). For the most part everybody in MC is looking to achieve the same look, but individually everybody has to go about it in a slightly different manner because of different body types. Whereas in SW&D there is already a great deal of segmentation by aesthetic. The market for a book on how to properly achieve the Goth Ninja aesthetic would be lucky to sell 10% of the copies of the average Flusser book sold each year. That and the fast pace with which these types of looks come into and out of fashion would also date the books very quickly.

I have never loved misogyny more than when it is coming from the mind of Too $hort.

Quote:

Originally Posted by omgcookielol

Wow. Just got around to checking prices for Exemplaire... Barneys is stocking them this season, and they're selling single ply cashmere sweaters online for 1.2k-ish. Has anyone had the chance to check these things out in person?

This is the same as Esemplaire, right? Brigade has some coats from them this season. They are pretty neat, but like you said, very pricey.

They are much smarter. By having kept their locations very limited, and only in a very sought after, cool, space, they've managed to cultivate an air of exclusivity around what is really a mass market product. Think of Target vs. Walmart. That's really their differentiator.
Sure, the clothes fit a little differently, but honestly, it's not unlike the GAP circa 1995, when GAP was in its heydey, before it lost its focus, and started to do really un-GAP like things like leather jean jackets (honestly, there was one in about 2000 that sold for about $300, and was not that much worse than the similar offerings of say, RRL, though obviously, the notions were not as good) and leather pants (who every greenlighted this was probably dragged through HQ behind a chariot - people simply do not go to the GAP to buy leather pants, and even in the LA stores, you had your pick of sizes even at 70% off).Right now, you have tourists going to NYC and bring stuff back to De Moines, or Boise, or Lincoln, NE, and they are all apeshit about Uniqlo. I remember that when GAP expanded in the late 80s and early 90s, it was the same thing - but then you have to do things to maintain that image. And in 2012, for a place like Uniqlo, there is a much more crowded market, and a lot more marketing considerations. This just the opinion of someone who works in that space.

I completely agree. All I am saying is that I don't think you shave that much off of your image of exclusivity by expanding into 10 cities as opposed to one. You might be able to count on one hand the number of people that travel from Des Moines to NYC and choose to shop at Uniqlo, but that number probably expands to a few dozen if they have a store in Chicago. You then also have the people that live and work in Chicago, but grew up on Des Moines that now bring home Uniqlo clothing for everybody at X-mas because it is cool and exclusive.

Interesting. That said, I can easily see why that wouldn't work. The model shouldn't be "build outward from the mother ship". It should be establish stores only in large urban markets that have the critical mass needed to support it.